Wolves’ Chinese owners have vowed to learn from the club’s previous mistakes and continue to invest in the side before redeveloping Molineux.

Wolves finished bottom of the Premier League in 2012 after then-owner Steve Morgan spent £18million rebuilding the Stan Cullis Stand.

Now Wolves are back in the big time after coming seventh and have committed to expanding their home from 32,000 to 50,000.

But chairman Jeff Shi insists the vision will not be to the detriment of improving Nuno Espirito Santo’s talented squad.

Wolves will enter next season’s Europa League qualifying stages if Manchester City win the FA Cup this weekend.

And plans are afoot to sign more quality players this summer with targets including AC Milan’s Portuguese striker Andre Silva.

Shi, part of the Chinese conglomerate Fosun, said: “We have our plan to expand the stadium. I was thinking about that and not for this coming season, maybe for next season.

“I’ve seen the squad is the priority ahead of the stadium, so we should put every penny into the squad at the beginning and it will build a strong squad.

“If you have not got a very big stadium, you can still win games. But the stadium is good for the long term because you can get more fans to come.”

Wolves had a relatively short squad in 2018-19, with just 16 senior outfield players.

Nuno Espirito Santo only wants to work with a small number, regardless of whether they’re in Europe or not, and Shi added: “I have talked with Nuno and he thought the philosophy will be the same.

“We will still try to keep a small squad and will not think that because we have one more tournament to compete in, we will have to get more players, because if you go out of the tournament early you then have to think about how you deal with them.

“We will not do this kind of thing, we will still try to keep a short squad – as Nuno wants – but in the meantime, it requires higher quality from our academy players because sometimes what you need is them; they can step up, they can help the team.

“If we go to Europe – fingers crossed – I don’t think it will just be about improving the first-team.

“It’s about improving the squad for our under-23s and under-18s so they will be ready when we need them.”